Earl Ijames, Henry Louis Gates, and “Colored Confederates”

I have written extensively about Earl Ijames’s mishandling of evidence related to the presence of black southerners (free and enslaved) in Confederate armies, but it is truly disturbing to learn that a historian such as Henry L. Gates endorses his shoddy research. You can find the following in Gates’s book, Lincoln on Race and Slavery:

pp.xxxviii-xxxix “The pioneering research of Earl Ijames reveals that some slaves bore arms, and some free Negroes in the South actually enlisted and fought in the Confederate Army, as Frederick Douglass as early as 1861 warned Lincoln they would do, in an attempt to persuade Lincoln to authorize the use of black men as soldiers.”

And the subsequent footnote, p.lxvi n13. “Earl L. Ijames, correspondence, November 17, 2008; … Ijames, the curator of the North Carolina Museum of History, says that, among others, the Fortieth Regiment of North Carolina Troops, Company D, included several free black men who enlisted voluntarily and fought with guns in combat against the North. His book Colored Confederates is forthcoming.”

"In this stunning and well-researched book, Kevin Levin catches the new waves of the study of memory, black soldiers, and the darker underside of the Civil War as well as anyone has." -David Blight, author of Race and Reunion

Kevin, I agree that it is disturbing to see Henry Louis Gates drawn into Earl Ijames’ sloppy and misleading work. It is also sad. Gates is the sort of public intellectual to whom we ought to be able to look for thoughtful discussion of issues like this. Instead, he has evidently used Ijames’ “research” to bolster a thinly constructed thesis of his own — that Douglass’ 1861 warning was prescient and free black men joined the CSA to pressure Lincoln into the creation of black units. He can do better than this. We can only hope the readers of this work will read it with more critical rigor than Dr Gates exercised.

Has anyone tried to contact Dr. Gates? I am afraid that he will “stick” with his argument without a serious challenge because he can. Although I admire his work on African American literature, “Skip” is not a historian.

While it is true that the bulk of his work, and much of his renown, has been in African and African-American studies, his undergraduate degree (from Yale, no less) is in history. I want to believe that he could be persuaded to take a disinterested second look at Ijames’ conclusion.

Wilentz reviewed several Lincoln books, including volumes by Henry Louis Gates, John Stauffer, Michael Burlingame, and others. Wilentz describes Gates as a “literary historian,” but I am unfamiliar with Gates’ work.

The link includes Gates’ response to Wilentz, followed by Wilentz’s response to his critics.

This was a massive review essay, even apart from the responses — but it was an enjoyable read. Hope that this helps.